Energy Minister Bill Johnston has urged the Collie community to be ‘united’ in its vision for the future after tempers flared at the community meeting organised by the AMWU last Friday.
Mr Johnston, who attended the meeting to hear the ideas for Collie’s future from the community, said he was surprised to see ‘significant division in the community’.
“I think that is unhealthy and I would encourage people to be united rather than divided,” he said.
“You’re going to get better outcomes if you’re united.”
The meeting was marred by a number of verbal clashes between community members who had differing views on the future of Collie’s coal industry and what should be done to support business in town.
AMWU state secretary and meeting organiser Steve McCartney said the ‘vigorous debate’ was to be expected with the town’s future on the line.
“There’s always going to be a bit of rough and tumble when there’s this much passion about the future,” he said.
“They’ve got their livelihoods on the line and their investments on the line.
“We’ve tried ... to inform as many people as we could (about what is happening) and get their questions answered. Some people won’t like the answers and that’s OK, but that’s how these things work.”
Some of the community’s questions for the minister focussed on whether it was the right decision to move toward renewable energy production at the expense of coal, but Mr Johnston said such decisions were out of the government’s control.
“People need to accept that there are technological changes happening, which is not about government policy, and industry is making its own decisions about how it gets supplied power,” he said.
“That is something that is very difficult for a community like Collie.”
Mr Johnston said he wasn’t going to make ‘false promises’ to the community about its future, but wanted to know ‘what the people of Collie are looking for’.
“Some people have very clear views about trying to get large-scale industries to Collie,” he said.
“We are on that game and have made money available to support industries if they make that decision (to move to Collie) but of course it’s a free market and we can’t force companies to invest.”
Collie-Preston MLA Mick Murray said the government had been doing ‘a lot of work not in the public arena’ to make sure Collie would ‘survive into the long-term future’.
He said while the funding was being made available for smaller industries to set up in Collie, the government was still looking for a ‘big industry’ to ‘take the jobs for the next 20 to 25 years’.
Mr Murray said the government was working to get the Shotts Industrial Park in working order, so it would be ready to host any big industry that came to town.
Other ideas raised at the meeting included capitalising on the exisiting lithium industry by getting Collie involved in the battery manufacturing process and exploring the possibility of biofuels.
The next community meeting has been scheduled for the first week of March, and Mr McCartney said he would continue to get the government to answer the community’s questions.
“The first week of March, we’ll be back here again and we’ll have Dave Kelly and Alannah MacTiernan to answer questions for ... people who are interested in investments in the regions,” he said.
